Media Spectacle

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Description: During the mid-1990s, the O.J. Simpson murder trials dominated the media in the United States and were circulated throughout the world via global communications networks. The case became a spectacle of race, gender, class and violence, bringing inMore...

During the mid-1990s, the O.J. Simpson murder trials dominated the media in the United States and were circulated throughout the world via global communications networks. The case became a spectacle of race, gender, class and violence, bringing in elements of domestic melodrama, crime drama and legal drama. According to cultural critic and scholar Douglas Kellner, the Simpson case was just one example of what the author calls 'media spectacle' -- a form of media culture that puts contemporary dreams, nightmares, fantasies and values on display. Through the analysis of several such media spectacles -- including Elvis, the X Files, Michael Jordan, and the Bill Clinton sex scandals - Kellner's insightful and fascinating book draws out important insights into media, journalism, the public sphere and politics in an era of new technologies.Media Spectacleis a brilliant dissection of contemporary society; its ongoing appetite for scandal, tragedy and perversion; and the new technologies and media thatstrive to feed this immense hunger. This is cultural criticism and media analysis at its best.

Douglas Kellner is the George F. Kneller Chair in the philosophy of education at UCLA and author of numerous books.

Preface and acknowledgments

Media culture and the triumph of the spectacle

Guy Deboard and the society of the spectacle

The infotainment society and technocapitalism

From media culture to media spectacle

Signs of the times

Cultural studies as diagnostic critique

Commodity spectacle: McDonald's as global culture

McDonald's and McDonaldization

Theorizing McDonald's: a multiperspectivist approach

McDonald's between the global and the local

McDonald's between the modern and the postmodern

Criticizing/resisting the McDonald's spectacle

The case against McDonald's

Evaluating McDonaldization

The personal and the political

The sports spectacle, Michael Jordan, and Nike

The sports spectacle

The spectacle of Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan and the sports/race spectacle

Michael Jordan, Nike, and the commodity spectacle

Third coming, sex scandals, and the contradictions of the spectacle

Contradictions of Michael Jordan

Reading Jordan critically

Megaspectacle: the O. J. Simpson murder trial

Murder and media spectacle in Brentwood

Spectacle culture and the social construction of reality

The verdict and the aftermath

The Simpson spectacle, identity politics, and postmodernization

Identity and identity politics

The Simpson effect: contradictions of a megaspectacle

TV spectacle: aliens, conspiracies, and biotechnology in The X-Files

Conspiracy, paranoia, and postmodern aesthetics in The X-Files

Series television as social critique: "Trust no one"

The postmodern sublime, or "Is the truth out there"?

Postmodern deconstruction: "I want to believe" but ...

Nothing important happened today ... except that everything changed

Representing the unrepresentable

Presidential Politics, the Movie

JFK, the Movie

LBJ and Nixon: bad movies

Ford and Carter: indifferent presidencies and poor spectacle

Ronald Reagan, the acting president

Bush I, mixed spectacle, failed presidency

The Clinton spectacle

Bush II, Grand Theft 2000, and Terror War

Conclusion: democratic politics and spectacle culture in the new millennium

*A minimum purchase of $35 is required. Shipping is provided via FedEx SmartPost®
and FedEx Express Saver®. Average delivery time is 1 – 5 business days, but
is not guaranteed in that timeframe. Also allow 1 - 2 days for processing. Free shipping is eligible only in the continental United States and excludes
Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico. FedEx service marks used by permission."Marketplace"
orders are not eligible for free or discounted shipping.